How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game

WOLFPACK (2019) is a rallying cry for women to join together, empower each other and celebrate one another’s achievements. Drawing on her incredible career as a professional athlete, author Abby Wambach explores how women everywhere can gain strength in numbers and achieve equality, fulfillment and joy.

Feminists looking for their next champion

Sports enthusiasts seeking fresh insights

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Abby Wambach is a double Olympic gold medalist, FIFA World Cup Champion and the highest international goal scorer of all time, for both male and female soccer players. In addition to being a champion for diversity and equality, Wambach is also the New York Times best-selling author of Forward: A Memoir.

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WOLFPACK

How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game

Synopsis

WOLFPACK (2019) is a rallying cry for women to join together, empower each other and celebrate one another’s achievements. Drawing on her incredible career as a professional athlete, author Abby Wambach explores how women everywhere can gain strength in numbers and achieve equality, fulfillment and joy.

Key idea 1 of 8

Trailblazing women are less like Little Red Riding Hood and more like the wolf.

Society likes to remind us that disobedient girls pay a high price for their waywardness. Just consider the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, the young girl who ignores clear instructions to continue along the path and avoid the woods. What happens to her? The Big Bad Wolf, that’s what. The moral of this fairytale is obvious – rules exist to be followed, and little girls shouldn’t get too curious.

And yet, as she reflects on her life and career, Abby Wambach can’t see a lot of truth in this old story. In fact, the best things in her life happened when she followed in Little Red Riding Hood’s footsteps and veered off the beaten track.

As a teenager, for example, Wambach dated boys. Why? Because it seemed to be what every other girl her age was doing. But something was missing from these early encounters, and during high school, she realized she was gay. Scared of her family’s judgment, Wambach initially hid this part of her identity, even from herself. Toward the end of high school, though, she fell in love and finally embraced her sexuality. This was her first taste of what it meant to step off the beaten path and go against the grain, following her heart rather than the status quo.

Wambach’s most cherished role models are women who have chosen their own way in life, too. Indeed, Wambach’s incredible sporting career couldn’t have happened without the trailblazing female soccer players that came before her, who refused to accept the status quo and the idea that soccer was a man’s sport. These were the women who went into battle to bring about Title IX, the federal law dictating that no one, whether male or female, should experience educational discrimination, including on the sports field. It was these women who created leagues for professional women’s soccer and fought for a living wage for professional female soccer players.

Given how much of her career and happiness has come about by her and other women’s refusal to do what society tells them to do, or stay on the designated path, Wambach now believes that all women should strive to be less like Little Red Riding Hood, and more like the wolf – powerful, courageous, and hungry for more.

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